The Rajah's Fortress — page 255: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

242 THE RAJAH’S FORTRESS. sickly light. The door swung inward, groaning on its hinges, and in an instant Forbes was alone in utter darkness, and the great door had swung into its socket with a dull crash. He groped his way to the wall and dropped down upon a soft mattress of some kind. He was tired and weary and would gladly have slept, but hope reasserted itself and he made a survey of the room, groping from wall to wall. His dungeon was about thirty feet square, and facing the door by which he had been thrust in, he discovered another door, this time of iron, which was as solid as the rocky walls around it. He crept back to his mattress and laid down. The troubled thoughts that crowded into his mind prevented sleep and he tossed restlessly, his brain tortured with visions of home and friends, until his dungeon door was suddenly opened and one of the guards entered with a lighted lamp and a tray con- taining a jug of water and some rice cakes. He placed both on a low stool in the center of the room and silently went out. The lamp shone dimly on the bare, cold walls and the two grim doorways facing each other. Forbes tasted the cakes and took a sup of the water. Then he went and lay down again, little dreaming of what was even then taking place on the other side of the dungeon wall. His weary eyes were closing at last, when a thunderous explosion sounded so close at hand that COLUM 1OOO SS co